22 September, 2008

PHOTO: Forensic archaeologist Matthew Vennemeyer of Ohio, U.S., of the International Commission for Missing Persons, ICMP, inspects body remains in a mass-grave site in a remote mountain area near the village of Kamenica, Bosnia, Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2008.

More remains of the Srebrenica genocide victims have been exhumed from a mass grave in eastern Bosnia - some 30 kilometers from Srebrenica. Kamenica valley.

Kamenica mass grave is the tenth secondary grave found in the village of Kamenica, where Bosnian Serbs brought bodies to cover up the Srebrenica massacre - Europe's worst atrocity since World War II. Around 4,000 complete and incomplete bodies of Srebrenica victims have so far been exhumed from 10 mass graves in the Kamenica valley alone.

"So far we have exhumed 97 complete and 180 incomplete skeletons," Murat Hurtic of Bosnia's Missing Persons Commission is quoted as saying to FENA (Bosnia's Federal News Agency). The exhumation of Kamenica mass grave, near the eastern town of Zvornik, began in mid-August and is expected to continue for at least another week, Hurtic said.

The previously exhumed sites contained over 2,000 bodies from the July 1995 massacre. Serb forces overran the then U.N.-protected Bosniak enclave of Srebrenica in the final phase of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, summarily killing more than 8,000 Muslim men and children, and forcibly deporting roughly 20,000 women in a U.N.-assisted ethnic cleansing of the enclave.

The victims were initially buried in a dozen mass graves. But after the release of satellite pictures showing large portions of freshly disturbed ground, Serbs moved them to other locations in order to cover up the crimes. The body parts were separated during reburial using bulldozers, and forensic experts sometimes found parts of a single person buried in three different so-called secondary graves.

PHOTO: British forensic archaeologist Esma Alicehajic, front and Matthew Vennemeyer of Ohio, U.S., rear, members of International Commission for Missing Persons, ICMP, inspect body remains in a mass-grave site in a remote mountain area near the village of Kamenica, Bosnia, Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2008.

PHOTO: Forensic experts from the International Commission for Missing Persons, ICMP, inspect body remains in a mass-grave site in a remote mountain area near the village of Kamenica, Bosnia, Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2008.

Kamenica Death Valley Yields 616 More Corpses (November 23 2007)Short excerpt: We found 76 complete and 540 incomplete bodies," said Ismet Musić, an official of the regional commission for missing persons, standing on the edge of a muddy grave where white-clad forensic pathologists cleaned up bones. This brings the total number of exhumed bodies to over 4,200 just from the "Death Valley" area alone...

Srebrenica Genocide Trials and Mass Graves (September 18 2006)Short excerpt: Ahmo Hasic "believed to be one of only 12 men who survived the slaughter of 8,000 Bosniak men and boys" told the judges he stayed alive only by playing dead after Serb soldiers started shooting.The trial chamber heard a similar testimony last week from Mevludin Oric who described how he lay under a pile of dead bodies for several hours...

Genocide Trial Without Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic (August 22 2006)Short excerpt: “Defenceless men and boys [were] executed by firing squads, buried in mass graves and then dug up and buried again in an attempt to conceal the truth from the world." Chief U.N. Prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, said many victims had been bound and blindfolded "to make the murder easier for the executioners"...

Srebrenica Genocide: Crime Against All Humanity (August 18 2006)Short excerpt: In Potocari on July 12 a 14-year-old Bosniak girl hung herself with her scarf after she and her 12-year old cousin were raped by Serb soldiers. By this time Serb soldiers had killed at least 99 people, including 20 to 30 women and children...

Kamenica Mass Grave Yields Over 1,000 Body Parts (August 11 2006)Short excerpt: A 10-person team, including forensic experts from Canada and Serbia employed by the Bosnia-based International Commission on Missing Persons, worked in the 18-meter by 4-meter (60 ft by 13 ft) grave...

11th Anniversary of the Massacre (July 11 2006)Short excerpt: Meanwhile, new Srebrenica victims were being unearthed at one of the largest mass graves discovered last month in the village of Kamenica, some 30 kilometers from Srebrenica. Among them - body remains of children; the youngest victim was a 10 year old girl...

More Victims Found as 11th Anniversary of Genocide Looms (July 6 2006)Short excerpt: Forensic experts said on Thursday they had unearthed the remains of 268 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre - the first legally established case of genocide in Europe after the Holocaust - days before its 11th anniversary...

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Srebrenica Genocide is not a matter of anybody's opinion; it's a judicial fact recognized first by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and subsequently by the International Court of Justice.